<p>Hey everyone, I’m speaking on behalf of a good friend of mine, a current junior, as I’m not sure of how help guide her in her quest for college.</p>
<p>My friend has had a completely miserable high school life which has entailed severe poverty (income below 20,000), emotional instability (treated for depression for over two years), and just a few months ago, child protection services. After her parents’ house got repossessed in the last economic downturn, they’ve been living in their grandmother’s house. The grandmother was a hoarder, the mother basically works herself to exhaustion every week trying to put food on the table (still needs welfare), and the father was never really present except to be an occasional nuisance and a pest (he eventually was incarcerated for burglary). </p>
<p>What’s extremely cruel about this is that fact that she’s an bright and bubbly human being. Extremely intelligent, a great writer, artsy, and overall a very emotionally (well, until depression rears its head) and intellectually mature person. I have absolutely no doubts that if she had been dealt even slightly better cards, she would have easily been in the top 5% of her class, with much higher scores. Hell, she’s the reason another good friend of mine got an A in precalculus; he’s gone on to take AP Physics C and is projected at a 4/5. </p>
<p>Despite being Baker Acted (a euphemism in Florida for being put under temporary mental care for safety reasons) a few weeks prior, she scored a 2130 on the SAT back in March. No resources. No prep. Nothing. What gives me great anguish is seeing such great potential go to such waste. Her parents were not well educated at all, and knowing her potential, I really want to do my best to guide her to at least the best public schools in our state (UF, FSU, etc.), with possibly some top 50 school reaches. Heck, maybe she could dream for an Ivy or any other top relevant need-blind universities – that would easily set her back on track. Her passions involve psychology, cognitive science, art, therapy & counseling, and English.</p>
<p>Her course schedule was rigorous (our school offers IB courses and AP courses; she had taken about 4 AP courses, rest honors during freshman and sophomore year), and I know her GPA was somewhere around 3.5-3.7 at the beginning of junior year (she was in NHS). Her junior year schedule: IB SL Calculus, AP Chemistry, APUSH, AP Lang, AP Art and Studio, and IB SL Anthropology. She was doing fine in the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, child protective services took her away from her mother around October and placed her in one group home after another. She missed at least a week of school, and ended up missing at least one day a week from then on due to doctor’s appointments and whatnot. A good portion of her “friends” have basically abandoned her, adding to the stress.</p>
<p>Her final group home, while providing for her basic needs, is an atrocious environment for studying. She’s been having sleeping issues for a while now, issues that for reasons I don’t understand, aren’t being treated for at the moment. So she basically goes to school, struggles to stay awake (I often bring coffee for her when I can – it helps), then goes home, trying to frantically finish her work. She’s not allowed to stay afterschool for extra help because her group home is about a 35-40 minute drive away. How anyone can be expected to learn in such an environment?</p>
<p>It’s maddening; only IB SL Calculus is the only class she hasn’t completely lost control of, since all you need after learning the material is simply your brain, while classes that require work for a large portion of your grade have gone down the toilet. Her extracurriculars are also nonexistent, especially after she was put into a group home. She does have out-of-school interests, such as her art portfolio, ballet, volunteering, swim, reading, etc., but pretty much everything but her art stopped after the whole child services drama. Before then, she probably had around 100 community service hours. I think the community service part could be remedied by counting chores around the group home as community service, but I’m not too sure about that. </p>
<p>However, on the bright side, she’s extremely likely to become a National Merit semifinalist with a score of 215 in Florida. Plus, with her writing skills, I think she’d have a fair shot at QuestBridge. I’ve been encouraging her to look for more writing based scholarships – any awards are likely to help out.</p>
<p>I’ve been doing everything I can to help her out: I’ve donated several of my own prepbooks, skipped my less important classes to give her extra tutoring, talked to her teachers personally, kept her on track mentally by keeping her focused on her goals, been there when her emotional programs became too extreme for her to handle, etc. </p>
<p>I just want to know if my help is worthwhile, that I’m not wasting my time by helping her shoot for a lofty goal. I don’t want to hurt her in the process. I truly believe she can persevere; she’s not so sure. Our aim is to pass her AP exams with the damage that has been done this year, and then make up the work over the summer to hopefully replace the incompletes with as many As as possible. After all, she’ll be eligible for a full scholarship to any public school in Florida as the result of being in a group home.</p>
<p>But, knowing the person she is, she deserves so much better. Is it too much of a longshot to aim for top 20 schools? I know there won’t be any certainty – those schools are reaches for just about everyone. But is it even a possibility at this point? It’s a lot of stress on me too, I’m at this point becoming a crappy life coach. I can’t find it in me to let fate run its course.</p>
<p>She’s a brilliant mind that belongs in a brilliant university, with a character that is second to none. </p>